Abstract
International trade can cause winners and losers within and across countries. How do these distributional effects matter for individual attitudes toward trade? In answering this question, we focus on the role of inequity aversion. We expect individuals to prefer agreements that result in a more equitable distribution of gains and losses. This inequity aversion should get weaker as one moves from oneself to fellow citizens to foreign citizens. At the same time, it should be particularly pronounced in the realm of losses. A conjoint experiment fielded in Poland and Spain that asked respondents to assess trade agreements with different distributional consequences allows us to test these theoretical expectations. Our research design is particular in allowing for both gains and losses from trade. We also keep the gains and losses from trade on the same scale for the respondents, their fellow citizens, and foreign citizens. The results indicate that inequity aversion accounts for about one-fifth of the positive effect on trade agreement support from increased individual, fellow citizen, and foreign citizen gains. The study contributes to a rich literature on trade attitudes and our general understanding of how citizens form political attitudes.
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